A Page From Said’s Diary On Sartre, Beauvoir, Foucault
Posted: July 28, 2010 Filed under: Academia, Humour, Political | Tags: Foucault, Homosexuality, Post-Colonialism, The Left, The Palestinian Cause 10 Comments »
Edward Said loves shattering your academic heroes. In a seminar on the Middle East in Paris in 1974, he met Sartre, Beauvoir and Foucault at Foucault’s apartment and was disappointed in their pro-Zionist political stances. The amusing entry in his diary on the entire episode can be found here in its entirety but here are some brilliant anecdotes:
On Beauvoir:
Beauvoir was already there in her famous turban, lecturing anyone who would listen about her forthcoming trip to Teheran with Kate Millett, where they were planning to demonstrate against the chador; the whole idea struck me as patronising and silly, and although I was eager to hear what Beauvoir had to say, I also realised that she was quite vain and quite beyond arguing with at that moment.
Beauvoir had been a serious disappointment, flouncing out of the room in a cloud of opinionated babble about Islam and the veiling of women. At the time I did not regret her absence; later I was convinced she would have livened things up.
On Foucault:
In their biographies, both Didier Eribon and James Miller reveal that in 1967 [Michel Foucault] had been teaching in Tunisia and had left the country in some haste, shortly after the June War. Foucault had said at the time that the reason he left had been his horror at the ‘anti-semitic’ anti-Israel riots of the time, common in every Arab city after the great Arab defeat. A Tunisian colleague of his in the University of Tunis philosophy department told me a different story in the early 1990s: Foucault, she said, had been deported because of his homosexual activities with young students. I still have no idea which version is correct.
At the time of the Paris seminar, he told me he had just returned from a sojourn in Iran as a special envoy of Corriere della sera. ‘Very exciting, very strange, crazy,’ I recall him saying about those early days of the Islamic Revolution. I think (perhaps mistakenly) I heard him say that in Teheran he had disguised himself in a wig, although a short while after his articles appeared, he rapidly distanced himself from all things Iranian. Finally, in the late 1980s, I was told by Gilles Deleuze that he and Foucault, once the closest of friends, had fallen out over the question of Palestine, Foucault expressing support for Israel, Deleuze for the Palestinians.
On Sartre:
Sartre’s presence, what there was of it, was strangely passive, unimpressive, affectless. He said absolutely nothing for hours on end. At lunch he sat across from me, looking disconsolate and remaining totally uncommunicative, egg and mayonnaise streaming haplessly down his face. I tried to make conversation with him, but got nowhere. He may have been deaf, but I’m not sure.
For reasons that we still cannot know for certain, Sartre did indeed remain constant in his fundamental pro-Zionism. Whether that was because he was afraid of seeming anti-semitic, or because he felt guilt about the Holocaust, or because he allowed himself no deep appreciation of the Palestinians as victims of and fighters against Israel’s injustice, or for some other reason, I shall never know. All I do know is that as a very old man he seemed pretty much the same as he had been when somewhat younger: a bitter disappointment to every (non-Algerian) Arab who admired him.
[P.S: Said's comment on Foucault's homosexuality was unnecessary and in bad taste but he's defended himself in the comments]
Obama Wants American Congress To Do More For Israel
Posted: May 14, 2010 Filed under: Humour, Political | Tags: Do More, The Palestinian Cause, US Politics Leave a comment »“Barack Obama, the US president, has asked Congress for $205m to help Israel speed up construction of a new short-range anti-missile defence system, White House aides have said.
The so-called “Iron Dome” project is designed to intercept rockets and artillery shells from the Gaza Strip and neighbouring Lebanon.
The money would come in addition to annual US assistance to Israel.
“The president recognises the threat missiles and rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah pose to Israelis, and has therefore decided to seek funding from Congress to support the production of Israel’s short range rocket defence system called Iron Dome,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Thursday.”
I’m going to cut the ironic sarcasm here to point out how monumentally fucked up this is.
Boycott Divest Sanction Movement For Palestine
Posted: February 1, 2010 Filed under: Political | Tags: International Politics, The Palestinian Cause 4 Comments »The only viable hope for a free Palestine today depends on economic pressure on Israel. The solidarity movements that developed around apartheid South Africa and Central America made divestment central to their struggle. These movements recognized that economic sanctions and pressure are pivotal in bringing a change in government policies. Building and strengthening a global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement should be the core aim for many involved in today’s solidarity work for Palestine. Here is a simple introduction to each of these ideas:
1. Boycott:
i. Academic / Cultural Boycott: By refusing to participate in cultural exchange, artists and cultural institutions globally can send a clear message to Israel that their occupation and discrimination against Palestinians is unacceptable. In particular, the academic boycott can have significant impact on the establishment that is responsible for promoting theories and knowledge necessary for the pursuit of Israeli policies of occupation and discrimination.
ii. Consumer Boycott: Individual consumers can show their opposition to Israel’s project by participating in a consumer boycott of Israeli goods and services. A consumer boycott works in two ways: firstly by generating bad publicity for the offender and secondly by applying economic pressure for change.
The Israeli Barcode starts with 729
I personally think this is the most effective measure for nations geographically distanced from Israel. Some of the companies you should distance yourself from:
- Estee Lauder
- L’Oreal / The Body Shop
- Motorola
- Nestlé
- Intel
- McDonald’s
- Coca Cola
- Disney
- Home Depot
- IBM
- Revlon
- Starbucks
(A comprehensive list can be found here with details on these companies)
iii. Sports Boycott: South Africa’s exclusion from all major official competitions from the late 1960s and 1970s played an important role in isolating the regime and its supporters. A common reaction to proposals for a sporting boycott is that politics and sport should not mix. The reality in for Palestinians is that politics and sport are inextricably linked. Israel has imposed a de facto ban on Palestinian sport and leisure activities, and the freedom enjoyed by Israeli athletes and teams comes at the expense of Palestinians who are deprived of the right to participate in sports from a local to international level.
2. Divestment (or disinvestment): Many organizations, such as universities, churches and trade unions, have investments in Israeli or secondary companies with significant financial interests in Israel. Putting an end to investments in Israel and companies supporting Israeli occupation and apartheid stifles its economic power.
3. Sanctions: Given the current level and dependency of Israel upon global markets, particularly the technology and research sector, sanctions at a state, regional or institutional level may be the only remaining effective measure. Israel is in clear breach of the fourth Geneva Convention, which is the cornerstone of international humanitarian law that ensures minimum protections for civilians in armed conflict and occupation. The three ways governments can impose sanctions is by severing military links, economic links and diplomatic ties.
There is no other way to end the apartheid in Palestine. It’s a small price to pay for an individual and is usually a measure of last resort, but today, after 60 years since the conflict, economic pressure is the only option that has some potential of being successful in freeing the Palestinian people once and for all.
[Most of the text has been taken from http://www.bdsmovement.net/]
The Problem With NGOization Of Political Conflicts
Posted: January 29, 2010 Filed under: Political | Tags: Economic Development, International Politics, The Palestinian Cause 2 Comments »This post is taken from the interview here.
Question: How have non-profits impacted Palestinian and other Arab liberation struggles?
Hatem Bazian:
NGOs control the purse strings. Through this funding or through the staff they hire, they assert their political agenda. For example, the largest coalition of organizations that work on Palestine do not insist on US divestment from Israel or devote organizing resources into achieving this agenda. But look at the solidarity movements that developed around apartheid South Africa and Central America: they made divestment central to their struggle. These movements recognized that economic sanctions and pressure are central to change a government’s policies; but when it comes to Palestine, NGOs do not want to offend certain segments of the liberal Zionist community. So they shift their focus to changing Israel’s mind without making Israel suffer. This kind of strategy was dismissed as ineffectual in the South African and Central American solidarity movements.
The Palestinian struggle (which does not differentiate between land stolen from Palestinians in 1948 and land stolen in 1967) has demanded the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and calls for Palestine to be a complete whole. But today, almost all NGOs and foundations call for a “two-state solution” that insists Israel, as it’s currently constructed, must exist as is, and that Palestinians must learn to accept colonization and occupation. The two-state solution defends Israel’s “right” to define itself on racially exclusivist criteria, and hence exist as a racially apartheid state. Further, by proposing that Palestine exist as a divided, demilitarized state whose resources are fully controlled by Israel, this approach effectively eliminates the possibility of Palestinians having a real state that encompasses their historical and international rights. In other words, this “solution” would essentially dispense with the 6 million Palestinian refugees.
In other solidarity movements, there is often the understanding that they exist to support liberation struggles, not to dictate the terms of those struggles. However, when it comes to Palestine, NGOs feel they have the right to tell Palestinians what to do. In their framework, the problem is not Israeli colonization and occupation; the problem is that Palestinians need to be trained to develop “civil society” and learn to cooperate with Israel. Consequently, funding is often focused on developing joint “Israeli-Palestinian” ventures and projects rather than address the issue of occupation. Furthermore, the NGOization of the solidarity movement in the US has been so thorough that anyone who criticizes this position is silenced and marginalized.
Without exception, every foundation that funds work on Palestine (from the most conservative to the most “progressive”) does so from the understanding that Israel, as it currently exists, should stay intact, and the solution is to change Palestinians so that they will adapt to their colonial situation. Now, for instance, the [Open Society Institute] wants to bring Palestinian intellectuals to the US to “train them.” Train them to do what? Train them to see the situation in the way the US does and facilitate the continued colonization of Palestine?
Atef Said:
In Egypt, NGOization often competes with grassroots organizing work. or instance, in labor organizing, NGOs encourage workers not to clash with business owners, thus pacifying labor struggles. Sadly, most NGO leaders were previously involved in the country’s Left movements, but were seduced into the NGO world because they can be funded (including personal benefits like travel and luxury hotel accommodations) and incur less trouble with the establishment. A significant problem with this model, of course, is that NGOs depend on foundations for their resources, not the people; thus, they spend little if any time organizing and are instead accountable only to their funders. For example, since NGOs are dependent on foundation support, directors of NGOs focus on quantity rather than quality of work (that is publish more reports in less time).
In 1997 and 1998, I started to observe from my work in these human rights NGOs that they are a bit isolated, and while they claim to defend people’s human rights, they are not invested in the question of social change and social justice.
